Friday, December 29, 2017

In mid-December, more than a dozen
members of SEIU Local 73 sued SEIU President Mary Kay Henry in
Chicago federal court in an effort to return their union to local governance
through democratic elections. Seventeen months ago, Henry imposed
a trusteeship on Local 73, removing the union’s officers and board and
appointing Eliseo Medina, Dian Palmer (president of SEIU
Healthcare Wisconsin) and Denise Poloyac (Director of SEIU’s Property
Services Division) to run the union as trustees.

In another interesting development,
Matthew Brandon – Local 73’s former Secretary-Treasurer who was removed
from office by Henry’s trusteeship – has launched an independent union that’s
actively organizing elections to decertify SEIU, according to readers. Brandon’s
new union has been moving towards elections at various units, including Cook County’s
hospital maintenance department and the City of Chicago’s building maintenance
department, say readers.

SEIU International has reportedly
sent 15 staffers to Chicago to fight these decertification efforts. A reader
reports that SEIU’s trustees at Local 73 recently fielded a phone call from
Mary Kay Henry and Andy Stern regarding the challenge presented by Matt
Brandon’s independent union.

The federal lawsuit, filed on
December 14, asks the court to declare the trusteeship void as of February 3,
2018. It cites the 1959 Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which
mandates that such trusteeships expire in 18 months. The plaintiffs want their
union to conduct elections to choose its officers and board members prior to
February.

The lawsuit reads:

Specifically, plaintiffs are seeking a Court Order requiring that the
democratic process be upheld in that the current Trusteeship should terminate
as mandated on February 3, 2018, that the SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL
UNION, LOCAL #73, be restored to self-governance, that the process to hold
elections be commenced immediately, and that this Honorable Court mandate that
the Department of Labor oversee these elections to ensure non-biased, fair,
impartial, Constitutional and democratic processes be maintained throughout.

According to the lawsuit and
readers’ reports, SEIU’s trustees have log-jammed members’ requests to hold
local elections. On September 23, the trustees held a general membership meeting
and some workers showed up wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words “The time
to vote is now.” A motion for local elections was made and seconded from the
floor, but the lawsuit says Trustee Denise Poloyac rejected the motion and said
the session was not a “general membership meeting.”

The next general membership meeting
was scheduled for December 16. Here’s what happened, according to the lawsuit:

The general membership meeting scheduled for December 16, 2017 was
cancelled unilaterally without cause by Trustee Poloyac, and this was
communicated to the members via an email from Martha Gallegos, the Office and
Special Project Manager for Local #73 sent on December 12, 2017.

Just two days after the trustees
announced the cancellation of the meeting, thirteen union members filed their
suit in Chicago federal court. The suit alleges:

Defendants have failed and refused to schedule a membership meeting of
Local 73, have failed to seek nominations for a ballot and have generally
failed to comply with the election procedures necessary in order to return
control of Local 73 to its members following the February 3, 2018 termination
of the Trusteeship.

Below is a copy of the lawsuit,
which includes a copy of the e-mail sent by Martha Gallegos canceling
the union’s general membership meeting on December 16.

Friday, December 22, 2017

Kaiser Permanente has blocked SEIU-UHW from participating
in upcoming bargaining with its “partnership” unions after SEIU-UHW’s Dave
Regan filed a statewide ballot initiative targeting Kaiser, according to an
internal memo issued by Kaiser executives last week. A copy of the memo along
with the ballot initiative is below.

What’s going on?

Here’s what Tasty has learned so
far.

Apparently, Regan has become
increasingly marginalized by Kaiser’s execs and by the other “partnership”
unions in the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (the “Coalition”). The
Coalition, which is made up of 28 unions representing 100,000 Kaiser workers across
the US, bargains a national contract with Kaiser once every three years.

In late 2015, Regan suedGreg Adams, a top Kaiser exec, who served on the board of the California
Hospital Association (CHA) and was caught up in Regan’s failed ballot
initiative targeting the CHA.

Then, in August of 2017, Regan
reportedly pissed
off the other partnership unions when he tried to change the Coalition’s bylaws
in order to give SEIU-UHW virtually all of the power to call the shots during
the next round of national bargaining, which begins early next year. Other
unions, including AFSCME, rejected Regan’s proposal, which sparked a
shouting match during a three-day meeting of the partnership unions in Portland,
Oregon.

Apparently, Regan has burnt turf
not only with AFSCME but with SEIU locals in both Oregon and Colorado, including
his erstwhile buddy Meg Niemi.

And another source reports that
Regan no longer has the support of Hal
Ruddick, the Executive Director of the Coalition. Ruddick is a former hack
staffer at SEIU-UHW whom Regan got appointed to his position at the Coalition. Later,
Regan reportedly attempted to have Ruddick fired, but was unsuccessful -- which
hasn’t made Regan super popular at the Coalition’s offices.

After failing to convince the
partnership unions to give him more power, Regan asked Kaiser’s execs for their
help. In an internal memo issued last week, Kaiser's Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Chuck Columbus wrote:

…for months now, SEIU-UHW’s leadership has insisted in private meetings
that Kaiser Permanente management negotiate with SEIU-UHW as the sole representative
of the Coalition in upcoming National Bargaining. In these meetings, SEIU-UHW’s
leadership has threatened that if we refused their demands, they would put an
initiative on the California ballot that would adversely affect Kaiser
Permanente… We said no to SEIU-UHW leadership’s demand.

Currently, SEIU-UHW’s members from
San Francisco to Sacramento to Fresno are covered by a single pay scale.

Regan and Kaiser Senior VP Chuck Columbus

Kaiser’s execs told Regan they will propose cuts such that future SEIU-UHW hires
in Sacramento would earn 10% less than those in the San Francisco Bay Area,
while new hires in Fresno would earn 20% less than the Bay Area.

Regan, seeing takeaways on the
table and little power inside the CKPU or with Kaiser’s execs, decided to turn
to his old stand-by tactic of a statewide ballot initiative. On November 16, he
filed an initiative with the California Attorney General (“Accountability in
Managed Health Insurance Act”) which would prohibit Kaiser from raising its monthly
insurance rates until Kaiser’s capital reserves drop below a certain level.

In sponsoring this destructive initiative, SEIU-UHW leadership has
violated both the spirit and the actual terms of the agreements that set up our
valued Labor Management Partnership. Accordingly, we today have informed the
leadership of SEIU-UHW that we are withdrawing certain privileges of
Partnership from SEIU-UHW due to the union’s outrageous conduct. Among the
privileges we have withdrawn is participation of SEIU-UHW in 2018 National
Bargaining.

Kaiser’s memo then takes a shot at
Regan and his ballot initiatives:

Over the past few years, SEIU-UHW leadership has used the initiative
process to force concessions from various employers. All these efforts have
failed. If SEIU-UHW goes ahead with spending the millions of dollars it will
take to get this initiative on the ballot, we are confident that once
California voters understand the impact on Kaiser Permanente, they will join us
to defeat this measure in November.

These developments are quite a
turnaround for Regan, who has prided himself on being Kaiser execs’ lapdog.

In another episode, Regan directed
SEIU-UHW staffers (including Greg
Maron and Jared Mayhugh) to work as strikebreakers
alongside Kaiser managers to stop SEIU-UHW members from joining strikes by NUHW
and the California Nurses Association (CNA) at Kaiser.

And then there are Regan’s famous “wellness
walks.” Instead of picket signs and picket lines, Regan gave purple
pedometers to SEIU-UHW members and told them to lose weight so as to reduce
Kaiser’s health insurance costs.

Regan quickly became known as Kaiser’s
Richard Simmons.

If Regan has been such a loyal
lapdog to Kaiser’s execs, why is Kaiser now seeking takeaways from Regan?

One observer put it this way: “Because
they can.” This observer points to Regan’s failure to build a rank-and-file
organization inside Kaiser facilities that can fight takeaways.

A similar explanation comes from RoseAnn
DeMoro, the Executive Director of the CNA. At a rally several years ago
when Regan was in the throes of his lovefest with California hospital execs, DeMoro
predicted that the execs would eventually kick Regan to the curb. “These
corporations will treat Regan like they do every class traitor. They’ll toss
him aside once he’s no longer useful to them.” (Tasty is paraphrasing DeMoro
here.)

The fact that Kaiser is coming
after Regan for wage cuts in Northern California is quite a stunning historical
reversal.

In the late 1980s, Kaiser
unilaterally imposed a similar multi-tiered wage structure across Northern
California, which Kaiser workers tried to overturn by waging a seven-week
strike. Afterwards, Sal Rosselli was elected president of the union and, during
the next 15 years, he and his team dramatically expanded and strengthened the
union and successfully eliminated Kaiser’s multi-tiered wage structure in 2005.
In fact, Rosselli went even further, negotiating improvements to Southern
California Kaiser workers’ wage structures to help close the wage gap with
their Northern California co-workers. (Kaiser’s Southern California workers
earn substantially less than those in Northern California.)

Since parachuting into California
in 2009, Regan has taken no steps whatsoever to address the lower wage rates
paid to SEIU-UHW members at Kaiser’s Southern California facilities. And he’s
now facing a push by Kaiser execs to re-impose the multi-tiered wage structure
that Rosselli successfully eliminated back in 2005.

In other words, Regan
is poised to possibly deliver a massive failure to tens of thousands of Kaiser
workers.

What’s next?

Hal Ruddick, the Coalition's Executive Director

The Coalition unions have been conducting
surveys and electing bargaining committees to participate in national
bargaining, which begins early next year. SEIU-UHW, of course, will be on the
sidelines. It won’t bargain with Kaiser until 2019, when its “local union
agreement” with Kaiser expires on September 30, 2019.

As far as Regan’s ballot initiative,
once it’s cleared by the California Attorney General, SEIU-UHW will need to
spend millions of dollars to collect enough voter signatures to qualify the measure
for the November 2018 ballot.

Lee holds the title of “Executive
Vice President” at SEIU Local 1199, where last year he earned $128,902,
according to records from the US Department of Labor.

Union officials did not detail
allegations against Lee, said the Globe.
Here’s what SEIU Local 1199 said in a statement to the press:

“1199SEIU strongly condemns all forms of inappropriate conduct and will
not tolerate such behavior by any employee of our union. Upon being made aware
of these allegations 1199SEIU has taken the action of suspending Executive Vice
President Tyrék Lee while a formal investigation is conducted.”

The Globe notes that “Lee took the top job at 1199SEIU in January 2016,
when he was 38.”

In November, SEIU appointed SEIU
Executive Vice President Leslie Frane to lead an internal investigation
due to the multiple
SEIU officials accused of sexual harassment and/or misconduct, including the
suspension and subsequent resignation of SEIU Executive Vice President Scott
Courtney.

SEIU also announced the formation
of an external advisory group including Cecilia Muñoz, former White
House Domestic Policy Council director; Fatima Goss Graves, president
and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center; and employment attorney Debra
Katz, founding partner of law firm Katz Marshall & Banks.

It’s possible Lee’s suspension was
connected to the investigation by Frane’s team.

If so, this may create some
nervousness over at SEIU-UHW, where staffers and members at SEIU-UHW describe
a
culture of bullying and sexual misconduct, including alleged affairs by the
union’s president, Dave
Regan. In mid-November, Marcus
Hatcher, one of the union’s top officials, was fired for allegedly having
simultaneous affairs with three female members of the union’s Executive Board.

Friday, December 8, 2017

Here’s an interesting development that
underscores the declining political power of SEIU-UHW and the rising strength of NUHW.

Readers may recall that SEIU-UHW
and its president, Dave Regan, have been repeatedly criticized
for using California’s ballot system to cut sweetheart deals with the California
Hospital Association that sell out consumers and workers.

In local elections,
Regan has joined
hands with the Chamber of Commerce to attack progressive candidates.

Well... check out the latest chapter in this story.

Next year, the Golden State will
elect a new governor to replace Jerry Brown, who will be termed out of office.
Candidates for the governor’s office -- including the state’s Lieutenant
Governor, Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the former mayor
of Los Angeles -- are criss-crossing the nation’s most populous state to build support for their campaigns.

In October, SEIU-UHW and NUHW each held
their annual “Leadership Conferences” of stewards and rank-and-file leaders.

NUHW
pulled off a coup by organizing the four leading gubernatorial candidates to
conduct their first-ever debate at NUHW’s leadership conference in Anaheim. Here's a link to a video of the debate.

NUHW’s debate drew
reporters from across the state and got more than 100 new stories in the state’s
largest newspapers, TV stations, etc. NUHW also live-streamed the debate to voters
across the state, which featured questions about the candidates' support for a single-payer health system.

Friday, December 1, 2017

Over the years, Tasty has reported
on SEIU-UHW’s repeated failures to enforce its own labor contracts and
defend union members against their bosses.

Remember the Kaiser worker who sued
SEIU-UHW for failing to defend her against the allegedly meth-smoking
manager who fired her? Or the SEIU-UHW official who simply sat
on her hands while Kaiser Permanente fired a worker with 33 years on
the job? Or the SEIU-UHW member from Dignity Health who sued
SEIU-UHW in federal court alleging that SEIU-UHW officials failed to
enforce the union’s own labor contract and instead allowed the hospital to fire
her.

Well, here’s an interesting story
about a similar kind of failed representation at SEIU Local 721, which
represents 90,000 public-sector workers in the Los Angeles region.

On November 24, a California jury
awarded an $8.5 million verdict against SEIU Local 721 for wrongfully
terminating one of the union’s own staff members after he revealed to Local 721
officials a backlog of more than 600 arbitration cases that had been filed by
members but weren’t being handled. He alleged that Local 721 falsified records
to cover up the massive backlog.

The staffer, Talbert Mitchell,
worked as the union’s “Advocacy Coordinator” and had been on staff for 21
years. According to his lawyers, after Mitchell directed an internal report
revealing the massive backlog of arbitration cases and following his medical
leave for a hernia surgery, Mitchell was wrongfully terminated.

The jury agreed with Mitchell,
finding he was the victim of whistleblower retaliation, disability
discrimination, medical leave discrimination, and wrongful termination. The
jury awarded him a $2.4 million verdict and an additional $6.1 million in
punitive damages.

(Don’t count the money yet, as
these kinds of verdicts can shrink on appeal.)

A former member of SEIU Local 721 said
the staffer’s description of failed representation is consistent with his
experience. Here’s what he told Tasty in an e-mail:

Many employee grievances were mishandled (on the union side, once
responsibility of the grievance handling was transferred from the steward to
the Local) -- time frames were overlooked resulting in many management denials
and many more were lost after they were allegedly transferred to the County's
Human Resources Department for a higher level of possible adjudication called
Arbitration. Were the union staff set up
for failure by being given unmanageable caseloads or did the executive staff of
the Local just not care in representing it's members? Another question for the members to consider
is where does anyone think this award money, to pay Mr. Talbert Mitchell, will
come from. Why will no one at the Local
721 be charged mush less dismissed because of gross incompetence and/or
administrative mismanagement?

As for Talbert Mitchell, the former
Local 721 staffer, here’s what his lawyers said in a November 28 press release:

“Due to his disability, needing medical leave, and his reporting of
conduct he thought was illegal and which adversely affected union member
rights, he became the target of his superiors and ultimately was terminated
with a fabricated story," said Carney Shegerian, Mitchell's trial lawyer.
"Talbert was morally treated wrong by his employer and superiors, and
today a California jury of his peers announced that treatment was not only just
illegal, but punishable."

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